Easygoing Joe Biden remains loose about 2020 White House bid

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Will he or won’t he?

‘I’m not committing not to run.’
Vice President Joe Biden

Vice President Joe Biden said Monday he may run for president in 2020. Or at least he said he wouldn’t not run. For a soul-searching Democratic Party, that double negative may be the most positive utterance to hit the news cycle in some time.

Biden at first appeared to be joking, so reporters gave him an out if he wanted it. His follow-up? “For president. What the hell, man.” And then, after a pause: “I’m not committing not to run. I’m not committing to anything. I learned a long time ago, fate has a strange way of intervening.”

The 2015 death from brain cancer of his adult son Beau was one reason believed to have sidelined Biden for a 2016 run; Hillary Clinton’s prominence as party favorite was the other. But Biden is riding out his run as vice president at a time when President Obama’s approval rating stands at his highest since the 2012 election, by some measures.

And at four years out from the 2020 contest, anything shy of an all-out refusal is as good as an exploratory committee.

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